Electrolux Design Lab Innovation

A Vacuum Losing Suction

July 22, 2010 | Vacuum Cleaner Repair, Help & Advice | No comments

A vacuum losing suction is an infuriating thing to happen when you’re in the middle of cleaning the living room. So why does it happen?

All vacuum cleaners have a motor equipped with a fan that sucks in air and dust; while the dust stays in the vacuum, the air is filtered out. On bagged vacuums, that dust accumulates in the bag; and the more dust there is in the bag, the less space the air has to circulate. As the bag gets fuller and fuller the vacuum gradually loses suction. This is remedied by stocking up on vacuum bags, and replacing whenever they become full.

Bagless vacuum cleaners though, employ an altogether more efficient technique. Cyclone technology, pioneered by one James Dyson, uses the air coming in to the vacuum to keep the dust moving, allowing air to circulate freely in the vacuum. This means that no matter how full the bin becomes, no suction is lost. Of course Dyson vacuums aren’t immune to loss of suction; like their bagged cousins though, this is a problem easily solved. In this video, Helen takes you through how to diagnose loss of suction on a Dyson DC25 as well as showing what Dyson spares are needed to fix the problem.

Coffee Beans Aren’t Really Beans

July 21, 2010 | Uncategorized | 5 comments

Today’s post is for the benefit of my fellow connoisseurs in the eSpares Coffee Appreciation Society and any other coffee lovers out there.

With its shape and name, you’d be forgiven for thinking coffee is a bean in the same family as the kidney, soya, broad and cannelloni brethren – but the truth is your beloved cup of black gold comes from a fruit. Really. The coffee ‘bean’ itself is formed from short-lived white blossoms that give way to a red and round fruit that looks much like a cherry.

Although there are a number of varieties of bean – over 60 different types are grown across the world – it is the Arabica and Robusta variants that are the most prevalent. Coffee trees can grow anything up to and beyond 15 metres when left in the wild, although the regular pruning that has to be done on plantations keeps them at a more manageable size of between 1.5 and 3 metres. The tree itself has dark green leaves that are broad and shiny and it is said once the white blossoms appear they are similar in smell and appearance to the flowers of the Jasmine tree.

Countries such as Kenya and Colombia are among the most famed for producing high yields of coffee for both freeze-dried instant and ground varieties of the beverage. The labour-intensive picking of the product is often the most expensive part of the harvesting and processing chain.

Coffee trees are capable of producing for up to 25 years with an average annual yield of approximately 2,000 beans – the equivalent of around one kilogram of raw coffee per year. However, initially the plants can take between three and five years to start production and this is heavily dependent on climate. The bean from the Arabica plants is most reliant on rich mountain soil and performs particularly well in high, volcanic areas – this is where its deep and rich flavour comes from.

Altitude plays a large part in how coffee is grown in a number of other ways. The speed at which the plant can produce as well as the quality and density of the bean is all dependent on the height of the plantation. This is due to the amount of oxygen that is available to the tree as it grows and slower development can mean a longer wait for the blossoms to mature. However, this alters the taste and in many cases gives the bean more opportunity to obtain a full, rich flavour.

Aside from coffee keeping us all focused and working hard here at eSpares, we also sell coffee machine spares like jugs and seals. We stock lots of coffee maker cleaning tablets and filters too.

How's Your Lawn Looking?

July 14, 2010 | Gardening Tips | 1 comment

Over the past few weeks, a lot of the UK has bathed in beautiful, and very warm, sunshine. And while the weather has been perfect for heading down to the beach for the day or playing Frisbee in the park, it’s a decidedly more stressful time for garden owners across the country as they try in vain to keep their lawns from turning in to parched wastelands. The damper weather this week has offered some respite, but summer can still be a testing time for lawn wranglers.

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How’s your lawn looking?

July 14, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 comment

Over the past few weeks a lot of the UK has bathed in beautiful, and very warm, sunshine. And while the weather has been perfect for heading down to the beach for the day or playing Frisbee in the park, it’s a decidedly more stressful time for garden owners across the country as they try in vain to keep their lawns from turning in to parched wastelands. The damper weather this week has offered some respite, but summer can still be a testing time for lawn wranglers.

An arid looking Hyde Park

There are ways to combat your patch becoming too parched, as laid out in our handy Lawn Care Calendar. Here’s the advice for July:

“Continue mowing. If the weather is hot and dry, mow less frequently and consider raising the blades for a higher cut – less moisture will be lost this way. Subject to hosepipe bans, water the grass thoroughly during dry spells using a sprinkler. Spot treat any stubborn weeds with a weed killer. Scarify the lawn (rake with a spring tine rake) to remove dead thatch and moss. This will prevent brown patches appearing.”

If you need to whip your lawnmower in to shape, we’ve got loads of Flymo spares as well as lawnmower spares for loads of other brands. And if you don’t live in the North West, we’ve got an assortment of watering products too.

How To Replace a Dyson DC07 Motor – New Video

July 12, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments

You may be of the opinion that once the motor goes on your Dyson, it’s time to shell out for a new one. However, in this video, Matt shows you that while the motor is one of the hardest Dyson spares to fit, it’s still achievable with a bit of patience, a torx head screwdriver and a complete strip down of your vacuum.

Pressure Washer Soap And Water

My Dyson DC25 Adventure

July 8, 2010 | eSpares Updates  |  General Appliance Care & Advice | No comments

Hubert is working with the eSpares marketing team for a couple of weeks on a work experience placement. Yesterday, he was tasked with being the video production assistant on the filming of some Dyson DC25 fix-it videos. We asked him to write a few words on his experience of the day:

I’ve always thought that instructional videos must take seconds to make; grab the product, grab the part, get an expert and voilà – “Thanks for watching!”. However, I got the chance to join the eSpares team for a video shoot as a part of my work experience.

As soon as the planning commenced, I realised that I’d obviously been quite wrong. It’s a much more complicated process, luckily sped up by great feedback from the eSpares community. It all starts long before the shoot with planning of what videos to make and which spares to feature, based on customer reviews and questions. The video team works with the customer service team to establish what kind of queries eSpares customers have been asking to establish what videos are likely to be needed most.

The main purpose, obviously, is to help the customers fix it themselves with appliance spare parts – but it is also to point out the easiest ways of doing that. Before the day of the shoot, all the customer reviews of the products to be featured are carefully examined for anything that eSpares customers have learnt and taken the time to share. Scrutinising the reviews of the Dyson DC25 spares was actually my job this week, so I hope I did a good job of it.

Once we got there, the first thing we had to do was to set up the working area and to perfect what we had to do. Before instructing customers, the eSpares video team like to do the actions they are showing a bunch of times just to make sure it’s been done right and perfectly – in this case it involved assembling and dissembling the Dyson DC25 over and over again.

After that’s been done, it’s time for shooting; as with any movie, it may either take one perfect take or absolutely loads of tries to get everything spot on. Throughout the day, in a flurry of good and bad attempts, coffee breaks and lunch, we managed to get some really good takes, thanks to the patience of Helen (the video star) and Gabe (the director).

You can see the videos on the website and YouTube in a few days; for now, I hope I have indeed helped a bunch of Dyson DC25 owners to service their machine.

All About Us Espares

The Power of Reviews

July 1, 2010 | eSpares Updates | No comments

It’s nearly 2 years since we opened up the eSpares website to ratings and reviews. All of our customers can share their opinions about the products they’ve bought. Since then we’ve had tens of thousands of reviews of the parts we sell.

The reviews are moderated before they go live on the site, just to make sure that there’s no swearing or anything offensive. But so long as the review relates to the product and your experience of fitting or using it, it goes up on the site; irrespective of whether it’s positive or negative.

Now, you might think that negative reviews are something that we’d not welcome. After all, everyone prefers praise to criticism (even if the disapproval is of the products and not us!). But it’s probably the negative reviews that have had more of an impact on our business than the positive ones. Here are some reasons why:

Credibility
If all the reviews of a product are glowingly positive then people can be a bit suspicious about their authenticity. A mix of positive and negative reviews shows that they can be trusted.

The More Information the Better
There may be important information in those negative reviews that will inform other customers about whether it’s the right product for them or whether they can fit it themselves. For instance, if a customer can see from other customers’ reviews that a part is particularly difficult to fit, they may choose to call a professional repair person rather than tackling it themselves. We’d much rather that than have a frustrated customer.

We Know What Videos to Shoot
The eSpares website is now packed with great videos that show you how to fit spare parts yourself. We read all the reviews and this informs us of where to focus our efforts in producing new videos. If we see that customers are frustrated with fitting a certain product, we’ll go and shoot a video to help show other customers how to do it.

Product Quality Issues
Although we check all of the spares we send out, it’s usually only with use that quality issues come to light. Customers don’t always return items that have manufacturing faults, but they do tell us through reviews.

If a product gets poor reviews then we’re able to see that very quickly and can work with the manufacturer to improve the quality. This happened recently with a batch of dishwasher cutlery baskets that had a manufacturing fault. We were able to identify the faulty batch and get them replaced quickly because of the prompt feedback from our customers.

So, I’d like to say a huge thank you to anyone who has taken the time to leave a review on the eSpares site. It helps us to make the site better every day. We really appreciate it.

You can, of course, leave a comment about this post. All reviews are welcome – positive and negative!